Regionalism as a failure of national integration: a case study of Italy

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REGIONALISM AS A FAILURE OF NATIONAL

INTEGRATION

A CASE STUDY OF ITALY

The Institute of Economics and Social Sciences

of

Bilkent University

by

AYLÎN AVCI (GÜNEY)

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN POLITICAL SCIENCE AND

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

in

THE DEPARTMENT OF

POLITICAL SCIENCE AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

BILKENT UNIVERSITY

ANKARA

A^Ii'a Avc\

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J M

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I certify that I have read this thesis and in my opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and in quality, as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science and Public Administration.

yc. Prof. Meltem Müftüler-Baç (Supervisor)

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Prof. Dr. Metin Heper

Examining Committee Member

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Prof. Dr. Ergun Özbudun Examining Committee Member

Assoc. Prof. Nur Bilge Criss Examining Committee Member

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Asst. Prof. Lauren Me Laren Examining Committee Member

Approval of the Institute of Economics and Social Sciences

Prof. Dr. Ali L. Karaosmanoglu Director

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REGIONALISM AS A FAILURE OF NATIONAL INTEGRATION A CASE STUDY OF ITALY

Aylin Avci (Güney)

Department of Political Science and Public Administration Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Meltem Müftüler

Co-Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Metin Heper

December 1998

This thesis analyzes Italian regionalism in a historical context. The evolution of regionalism as a result of the failure of national integration in Italy will be discussed in different time spans that are deemed critical in Italian political life. The thesis will elaborate on the historical and structural factors such as the localist culture, the presence of the Church, the North-South divide that acted as an obstacle on the way to a successful national integration. Finally, the interplay of these forces during the unification, the fascist and post-fascist periods will be analyzed with regard to the national integration process. The thesis will aim to address the following questions: (1) Given that neo regionalism in Italy is not a new phenomena, what are the reasons or the structural factors that had caused the persistence of regionalism in Italy despite the attempts to create a unified country? (2) How did the Italian state try to make the Italians? What kind of integration model was used to provide the integration and to what extent was it able to overcome the duality between the North and the South? (3) What is the nature of the neo regionalism in Italy, is it a result of the failure of 'making Italians?' and to what extent does it pose a threat to the national unity of the country? It is concluded that the rise of neo-regionalism in Italy can not be explained only by the old and more recent theories on regionalism without taking into consideration the sui generis historical background of the problem of regionalism in that country.

Keywords: Regionalism, National Integration, Neo-Regionalism, Federalism ABSTRACT

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ÖZET

ULUSAL ENTEGRASYONUN İFLASI OLARAK BÖLGESELCİLİK

İTALYA ÜZERİNE BİR ÇALIŞMA

Aylin Avcı (Güney)

Siyaset Bilimi ve Kamu Yönetimi Bölümü Tez Yöneticisi: Doç. Dr. Meltem Müftüler-Baç

Ortak Tez Yöneticisi; Prof. Dr. Metin Heper

Aralık 1998

Bu çalışma, İtalyan bölgeselciliğini tarihsel bir çerçeve içinde incelemiştir. Bölgeselciliğin gelişimi, İtalyan ulusal entegrasyonunun iflasının bir sonucu olarak, İtalya tarihinde önemli görülen zaman dilimlerinde ele alınmıştır. Çalışma, öncelikle başarılı bir ulusal entegrasyona engel teşkil eden unsurlar olarak yerel kültürü. Kilisenin varlığını, Kuzey-Güney farklılığını vurgulamış, daha sonra, bu faktörlerin İtalyan Birliği, Faşist, Faşist dönem sonrası zaman dilimlerindeki etkileşimlerini incelemiştir. Çalışma başlıca şu soruları yanıtlamaya çalışmıştır; (1) İtalya’daki yeni-bölgeselciliğin yeni bir oluşum olmadığı göz önüne alınırsa, ulusal birliği sağlama çabalarına karşın bu ülkedeki bölgeselciliğin süregelmesinin sebepleri ve bunda etkili olan yapısal faktörler nelerdir? (2) İtalyan devleti ne şekilde bir İtalyan milleti yaratmaya çalışmıştır? Bu amaç doğrultusunda ne gibi bütünleşme modelleri uygulanmıştır ve bu çabalar Kuzey-Güney farklılığının ne derece üstesinden gelebilmiştir? (3) İtalya’daki yeni- bölgeselciliğin karakteri nedir? Bu bir İtalyan milleti oluşturma çabasının başarısızlığının bir sonucu mudur ve ülkenin bütünlüğünü ne derece tehlikeye sokmaktadır? Çalışmanın sonunda, İtalya’da ortaya çıkan yeni bölgeselciliğin literatürdeki eski ve yeni bölgeselcilik paradigmalarıyla açıklanamayacağı, ve bu sorunun ancak İtalya’ya özgü bir takım tarihsel ve yapısal faktörlerin yardımıyla açıklanabileceği sönucuna varılmıştır. Anahtar Kelimeler; Bölgeselcilik,

Bölgeselcilik, Federalizm

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Yeni-ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This study is a result of three-years of research and writing. It was a strenuous work, but at the same time, it was a project that thought me a lot on the way. I met very helpful and precious people during the course of these three years who 'put some salt in this soup'. I am indebted to the Cultural Affairs Division of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs which granted me a scholarship to accomplish the research of the study in Italy. Without their support it would be impossible to work on this topic and complete my dissertation. Particular thanks to the librarians of the Bologna Center of the Johns Hopkins University, especially to Gail. It was much easier to study after seeing her smiling face every morning. I am also grateful to Professor Luciano Vandelli at the University of Bologna who opened his personal library and archives for my research and provided me with the valuable support and encouragement.

Many thanks to the Committee members. Prof. Ergun Özbudun, Assoc. Prof. Nur Bilge Criss, and Asst. Prof. Lauren Me Laren, in particular to Assoc. Prof. Meltem Müftüler-Baç, my supervisor, for her patience and valuable comments. I would also like to thank Ümit Cizre-Sakallioglu for the time she devoted for reading the earlier versions of some chapters. The English of the study was improved by Shannonine Caruana, who was so

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patient and caring throughout the bad and good moments I had throughout these years. Other friends who supported and gave encouragement were Menderes Çinar, and in particular Filiz Başkan, who gave me the biggest stimulus by letting me hear her voice every morning during these years. I also want to thank our Department Secretary, Güvenay Kazanci who never said 'no!' to my unending demands and questions during the printing of the study. Special thanks to Paolo Ongania who, during his monthly visits to Turkey provided me with major newspapers, updated my data on daily politics in Italy and enchanted me through his support and interest in the topic.

I would like to thank particularly my supervisor and my Professor Metin Heper, whose patience, deep encouragement, valuable comments and great help enabled me to complete the work.

Thanks to my parents, my grandmother and in particular to my brother, Ali. Finally and certainly the most, I would like to thank my husband and my best friend. Korkut, for the embracing love and patience that motivated me throughout the work.

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The Second Wave of Administrative Integration : The 1970 Regionalization__________________ _ The "Southern Problem" and State Policies for Economic and Social Integration ______________________________ The Impact of European Integration upon National Integration in Italy _____________________________ 182 182 187 188 195 200 205

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The Obstacles to the Implementation of Regional Policies

of the EU in Italy 212

Center-Region Cleavage 212

Institutional Weaknesses of the Regional

Governments in the South 216

Cultural Reasons 220

Political Reasons 224

Failure of National Integration? 226

CHAPTER SIX NEO-REGIONALISM AND NATIONAL FRAGMENTATION IN ITALY IN THE 1990s The Domestic and International Factors Lying Behind

the Emergence of the "Northern Question"__________

The Collapse of Communism and the End of the Cold War_ The European Integration and "Europe of Regions"_______ Electoral Reforms through Electoral Referendums________ The Crisis of Legitimacy _____________________________ The Erosion and Decline of the Traditional Affiliations_ The Changing Economic Conditions in the North_____ Definition and Evolution of the Lega Nord_________________

The Ideology of the Lega Nord________________ _ The components of the Lega Nord's Ideology,

Neo-federalism 231 232 233 234 235 241 242 244 247 255 257 257 Xll

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Anti-Southern Stance

Criticisms and Fragmentation within the Lega Nord Other Federalist Proposals______________________________

Gianfranco Miglio's Federalism

Giovanni Agnelli Foundation's "Twelve-Region" Proposal An Assessment of Neo-Regionalism in Italy in the 1990s_________

259 262 265 265 267 268

CHAPTER SEVEN : CONCLUSION SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY APPENDICES A. B. C. F. G. H. I.

Lega Nord's Proposal of Federalism in Italy_ A Two Way division of İtalya______________

Certain Social Characteristics of Sections of Italy Shortly After National Unification

D. Regions of Italy_

E. Italy, Productivity Levels, By Region_

Italy, Distribution of RTD Factors by Region_ Distribution of Employment Intensity in High

Technology Industries : Mezzogiorno and Remainder of Italy__________________________________________ Industrial Performance in the Italian Regions ,1978-1985 and The Civic Community in the Italian Regions_____ Northern and Southern Satisfaction with National, Regional and Local Government (1988)______________

271 284 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322

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J.

Public Satisfaction with Northern and Southern

Regional Governments, 1977-1988 323

K. The "Three Italies" of Arnaldo Bagnasco 324

L. The Symbol of the Lega Nord 325

M. Manifesto 326

N. The Caricature in Corriere Della Sera 327

O. The Caricatures in Corriere Della Sera and

La Repubblica 328

P. The Fantasy Map 329

R. The Fantasy Map 330

S. The Financial Self - Sufficiency of the Regions

According to Giovanni Agnelli Foundation 331 T. "Twelve Region" Proposal of the Giovanni Agnelli

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The Aim of the Study

The rebirth of territorial politics^ in Italy along with the rise of a regionally- based political party in the 1990s has given a new vigor to the debate on regionalism and national integrity in that country^. In many respects, it has been surprising for many students of Italian politics that in a country that was united comparatively recently, political tensions based on territorial conflict between the North and the South have erupted so early and intensely, and that regionally-based parties demanding secessionism have come to play an important role in Italian politics. So far, with the exception of some

1 This new concept of "territorial politics" was defined by Bulpitt as: "that arena of political activity concerned with the relations between central political organizations and goverrunental bodies outside the central institutional complex but within the accepted boundaries of the state, which possess, or are commonly perceived to possess, a significant geographical or local/regional character." See J. G. Bulpitt, Territory and Power in tJie United

Kingdom (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983), chapters 1 and 2.

2 The best example of this was revealed by scholars such as Gian Enrico Rusconi, Se Cessiamo di Essere una Nazione: Tra etnodemocrazia regionali e

cittadinanza europea [If we are ceding to be a nation: Between regional

ethnodemocracy and European citizenship], (Bologna: П Mulino, 1993); Giorgio Восса, La disunita d'ltalia [The Non-unity of Italy], (Milan: Garzanti, 1991); Ernesto Galli della Loggia, La Morte della Patria. La Crisi delVldea di

nazione tra Resistenza, antifascismo e Repubblica. [The Death of The Nation. The Crisis of The Idea of Nation between Resistance, Antifascism and The Republic], (Bari: Laterza, 1998); Mark Gilbert, The Italian Revolution. The End o f

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insignificant parts of the periphery, there have been few influential parties or movements with territorial demands of autonomy or more decentralization, let alone regionally based parties promoting the break-up of the Italian state.

With the crisis of the state (crisi dello stato) that was characterized by the breakdown of the national party system and the disappearance of the two powerful center parties of the Cold War years, the Italian Communist Party-

Partita Comunista Italiana (PCI) and the Christian Democratic Party-Democrazia

Christiana (DC), there was an increase in the votes of the parties defending regional and territorial interests. Particularly important here is one regionally-based party, the Northern League -Lega Nord-^ led by Umberto Bossi. For the first time in Italian politics, in the 1992 general elections, this political party defended the view that the present political system in Italy is no longer capable of functioning: Northern Italy, economically the locomotive of Italy, has been discriminated against by the state in Rome; Southern Italy does not function as efficiently and productively as the North and lives on the resources chaimeled from the North to the South. The solution to this problem according to the Lega Nord is the division of Italy into three macro

^ The Northern League will be referred to as Lega Nord throughout this study.

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regions, the adoption of a federal system, instead of the present unitary one and the independence of the North within this scheme.^

The bottomline of the argument of the L·ga Nord had been its somehow covert reaction, in fact, rebellion, towards southern Italy, which has been culturally, economically and socially more backward than the North. This party's rise to power in a coalition government after the 1992 general elections, gave rise to an intense debate in Italy as to whether there was now a replacement of the 'Southern question' by a 'Northern question' that poses a serious threat to the national political unity and whether a reform of the state (riforma dello stato) could overcome the evolving crisis of the nation-state in Italy.

Here it is important to note that even though the Northern question was brought into the forefront with the rise of Lega Nord, regionalism is not a new phenomenon in Italian politics and that one can not attribute it to only the rise of the Lega Nord. For a long time, the North-South divide^ and duality has had historical, cultural, sociological and economical roots, and it has always played an important role at different periods of the Italian history. However, the recent studies, while attempting to explain the rise of the Lega Nord, have paid attention neither to the historical roots of this problem, which harks so far back to the period of the Roman Empire and the

pre-For the map of the Lega Nord's proposal, see Appendix A.

^ For the classical division between the North and South of Italy, that will be referred throughout the thesis, see Appendix B.

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unification period, nor to the recent developments that have taken place in Italy. Rather, the rise of regionalism in Italy characterized mainly by the rise of Lega Nord has tried to be explained by earlier and more recent theories on regionalism.

The earlier theories of regionalism mainly focused on the integration aspect of the nation-building process. Only a few paid attention to such factors as ethnicity, economic deprivation and internal colonialism. The focus of these theories was the peripheral, underdeveloped regions and as such, they failed to account for the regionalist movements in the developed regions of the nation-states. The more recent theories of regionalism link its rise to the crisis of the nation-state, that is, the pressures which are posed by globalism and the overloaded nature of the modern nation-state. These theories generally take issue with the centralized structure of the nation-state and as such, they are considered as post-modernist. These theories explain the present causes of the rise of regionalism but give short shrift to its historical roots.

Although it is important to utilize both sets of theories to come to grips with the general nature of regionalism in the Italian case, it is still not sufficient. The Italian case can not be explained by either sets of theories without taking into account such structural factors peculiar to Italy as the Napoleonic heritage, the persistence of the local cultures and the lack of a national feeling, the North-South divide and the presence of the Church which makes

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Italy a sui generis case. These factors are not dealt with in either sets of theories. This study, with a focus on these factors, aims to explain the Italian case as one that is a consequence of a failed national integration or the failure of the unitary system of government. However, first it is necessary to discuss the earlier and more recent theories of regionalism.

Theories of Regionalism

The O ld P aradigm s o f R egion alism

1. Theories of Integration

Since the French Revolution in 1789 the nation-state has been considered the most important unit through which the interests of nations are being articulated. Since the emergence of the modern nationalist movements during the fifteenth century, the "nation" has acquired a mythical value. Whereas Europeans' primary identity used to derive from membership in a feudal fiefdom or in the universalist Roman Catholic Church, the "nation" became the object of faith and emotional appeal. Like the Church, it was regarded as eternal and transcendental.^ Nation-building was mostly regarded as the task of the modern state involving a form of government that brought about the consolidation of territory in Western Europe.^ This process was often

^ Charles F. Andrain and David E. Apter, Political Protest and Social Change.

Analyzing Politics (London and New York: University Press, 1995), 94.

^ Ronan Paddison, The Fragmented State: The Political Geography o f Power (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983), 57. On the formation of the modern state, see also Joseph Strayer, On the Medieval Origins o f the Modem State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), Gianfranco Poggi, The Development o f the

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referred to as national integration. However, the most important problem concerning the processes of national integration was that the territories of a 'nation-state' often did not correspond to only one nation exclusively. To this date, even though most present nation-states are not composed of exclusively one nation, nevertheless nation-statism has been a commonly sought goal. The state, through social engineering and political mobilization aims to "standardize" the population to the point where it is sufficiently assimilated to be described as a nation-state.® Thus regionalism has been a concept with negative connotations; it aimed at the recognition of a separate identity and alternative administration to the nation-state. Regionalism was regarded as a fragmentary force upon the state. As the main issue was to attain a nation state, regionalism was something that could not be tolerated by states.

Modernization Theories

Especially, with the rise of the modernization school during the 1960s, the nation-state gained an even more important role. Karl Deutsch wrote: "Nation-preserving, nation-building and nationalism...these still remain a major and even a still growing force in politics which statesmen of good will would ignore at their peril."^ It was followed by works of Reinhard Bendix

Modern State: A Sociological Introduction (Stanford, California: Stanford

University Press, 1978), Charles Tilly (ed.). The Formation o f National States in

Western Europe (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1975).

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on nation-building^*^, Leonard Binder on national integration and political developmental, and Rupert Emerson on nationalism and political developmenb^. The literature on nationalism usually interpreted development as an incremental or anachronous process of change and growth. According to these views, nationalism provided an ideological impetus for all sorts of development-political, economic, social, cultural and psychological. Thus the basic assumption of these studies was the following: the stronger the nationalism, the greater the probability that new demands and actions will arise for involvement in national life; these demands and actions may lead to change and development.

The process of national integration, through which identities and loyalties become transferred from a pre-existing group such as the tribe or smaller ethnic division to a larger and culturally different entity is often associated with the more all-encompassing set of social processes known as

^ Karl Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the

Foundation o f Nationality. (New York: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

and John Wiley and Sons, 1953.), 4.

Reinhard Bendix, Nation-building and Citizenship: Studies o f Our Changing

Social Order, (New York: Doubleday, 1969).

Leonard Binder, "National Integration and Political Development,"

American Political Science Review, Vol. LV III, September 1964, 622-631.

Rupert Emerson, "Nationalism and Political Development," Journal o f

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"modernization". Modernization is associated with industrialization, urbanization, migration, increasing levels of literacy, and communications, and the emergence of new modes of social interaction. With the consequent loosening of ties with the smaller social units, the vacuum was to be filled by the development of ties with a larger and different group that is the nation.^^

The basic building blocks of the modernization perspective are parallel to tradition-modernity ideal types of social organization and value systems. These have been borrowed from nineteenth century sociology. The traditional society is variously understood as having a predominance of ascriptive, particularistic, diffuse and affective patterns of action, an extended kinship structure with a multiplicity of functions, little spatial and social mobility, a deferential stratification system in mostly primary economic activities, a tendency towards autarchy of social units, an undifferentiated political structure, with traditionalist elitist and hierarchical sources of authority. By contrast, the modern society is characterized by a predominance of achievement; universalistic, specific and neutral orientations and patterns of

For a detailed overview of the literature on nationalism and modernization see Ronald H. Chilcote, Theories o f Comparative Politics: The Search for a

Paradigm (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1981).

My emphasis. Paddison, The Fragmented State: The Political Geography o f

Power, 63-64. The main proponents of nationalism in the modernization

discourse are Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, 1983); Eric J. Hobsbawn, Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Benedict Anderson,

Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origins and Spread o f Nationalism.

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action; a nuclear family structure serving limited functions; a complex and highly differentiated occupational system; high rates of spatial and social mobility; a predominance of secondary economic activities and production for exchange; the institutionalization of change and self-sustained growth; highly differentiated political structures with legal rational sources of authority and so on.^^

Stein Rokkan's Center-Periphery Model

One of the most important models for explaining the national integration process and the formation of national states in Western Europe has been the model developed by Stein Rokkan. Rokkan uses a paradigm of political integration within a center-periphery framework. He utilizes Talcott Parsons' typology^^ of economic, religious, military and judicial factors as the channels linking the 'subject periphery' to the 'central establishment' The center was able to control its hinterland by virtue of its military superiority, which enabled it to extract necessary resources, and by a mix of the economic (trading), cultural-symbolic (religious) and legal links that brought the center and periphery into contact

See S. N. Eisenstadt "Modernization and Conditions of Sustained Growth,"

World Politics, 16, July 1964, 576-594. See also Samuel Eisenstadt,

Modernization: Protest and Change (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall,

1965); Clifford Geertz, ed.. Old Societies and New States (New York: Free Press, 1963); Lucien Pye, Politics, Personality and Nation-Building (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963).

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Rokkan also referred to the Parsons-Hirschman model where the four time phases were located: two center-generated policies, the first military- economic, the second cultural; two phases of internal restructuring opening up opportunities for the periphery, the first symbolic-cultural, the second economic.^’' Phase I in this model was the state-building process and covered the period from the High Middle Ages to the French Revolution in Western Europe. This period was characterized by political, economic and cultural unification at the elite level during which a series of bargains were struck and a variety of cultural bonds were established across networks of local power- holders. In addition, a number of institutions were built up for the extraction of resources for common defense, for the maintenance of international order and the adjudication of disputes, for the protection of established rights and privileges and for the elementary infrastructure requirements of the economy and the polity.^*

Phase II brought in larger sectors of the masses into the system: the conscript armies, compulsory schools and emerging mass media. According to Rokkan, they all created channels for direct contact between the central elite and parochial populations of the peripheries and generated widespread feelings

Talcott Parsons, Societies, Evolutionary and Contemporary Perspectives, (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1966).

Parsons-Hirshman model is cited in Stein Rokkan, "Dimensions of State Formation and Nation-building: A Possible Paradigm for Research on Variations within Europe," in Tilly, The Formation o f National State, 570.

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of identity with the total political system. Frequently, but not necessarily, they culminated in prolonged conflict with already established identities such as those built up through churches or sects or peripheral linguistic elites.^^

Phase III brought the subject masses into active participation in the workings of the territorial political system typically through the establishment of privileges of opposition, the extension of the electorates for organs of representation, the formation of organized parties for the mobilization of support and the articulation and aggregatioii of demands.^o

Finally, Phase IV represented the next series in the expansion of the administrative apparatus of the territorial state; the growth of agencies of redistribution, the building of public welfare services, the development of nationwide policies for the equalization of economic conditions, negatively through progressive taxation, positively through transfers from the better-off strata to the poorer, from the richer to the backward regions.^^

Rokkan argued that the analytical history of center formation and periphery incorporation in Western Europe must start out from six ^givens': fir^t, the

18 Ibid., 572. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid.

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heritage of the Roman Empire, the supremacy of the Emperor, the systematization of legal rules, the idea of citizenship; second, the supraterritorial, cross-ethnic organizations of the Catholic Church and its central role in the channelling of elite communications during the millenium after the fall of Western Empire; third, the Germanic kingdoms and the traditions of legislative-judicial assemblies of free heads of families; fourth, the extraordinary revival of trade between the Orient, the Mediterranean, and the North Sea after the defeat of the Muslims and the consequent growth of a network of independent cities across Western Europe; fifth, the development and consolidation of feudal and manorial agrarian structures and the consequent concentrations of landholdings in important areas of the West; and finally, the emergence of literatures in vernacular languages and the gradual decline of the dominant medium of cross-ethnic communication, Latin, quite particularly after the invention of printing.

In different places, these 'givens' combined to produce a variety of strikingly different configurations during the crucial state-building period from around the eleventh to the eighteenth century.22 According to Rokkan, the most crucial factor in the European development was that the fragmented center belt was made up of territories at an advanced level of culture, technologically as well as organizationally characterized by, first, a well- developed agricultural economy, second, a remarkable network of highly

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autonomous cities, institutionally distinct from the surrounding agricultural lands, third, the linking of the cities as well as the rural areas culturally through a common religion, and one dominant language, Latin; and fourth the transactions across these varied autonomous territories being regulated by the Roman law.^ These points will be elaborated in the next chapter, with specific reference to Italy.

For a long time, within the center-periphery model, the dominant theory of the formation and consolidation of states was the concept of "diffusionism". In essence, it holds that societies and states are formed around central points which assimilate the peripheries to their own values. Consequently, a common social, economic and political system emerges. The values are those of elites in politics, economics, education and other public spheres, which legitimate the distribution of roles and rewards in society. Rulers seek to extend the dominant value system throughout society. And, by bringing more of the population into contact with one another, the development of unified economic systems, political democracy, urbanization and education will create greater acceptance for it. The process may not be always smooth. Indeed, in the initial stages of contact, the contrast between peripheral and central values may be a source of conflict and even, in the case of territorial

22 Ibid., 575. ^ Ibid.

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peripheries, secession is possible. But, at least in territorially compact societies, integration is the norm.^^

The diffusionist model was criticized because of its deterministic approach. The main criticism was that the ideology of nationalism is not merely the product of cultural diffusion from the core and the assimilation of the peripheral territories into a common value system. The ideology of nationalism may be consciously used by political elites to create a common value system, using mechanisms of communication, education and administration. The political act of creating the state may come first and the sense of national identity would be created later by public policies and partisan activity. John Breuilly, for instance, has regarded nationalism as a special and successful form of modern politics to capture state power in opposition to ruling classes. In his view, nationalism serves as a vital political discourse able to mobilize different strata, uniting divergent social interests and legitimizing their political aspirations. In other words, nationalism is a form of politics, principally opposition politics.^^ He states that the roots of modern nationalism are to be found in the territorial and monarchical states of Western Europe in the early modern period. As these states extended their authority over their subjects and diminished that of other institutions, such as churches, estates and guilds, and as they came into increasing and more

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intensive conflict with one another, they took on the character of nation states, Thus opposition to increasingly powerful monarchical states in various forms laid the ground for nationalism.^^ Thus nation-building is an activity suiting the interests of key groups at various historical moments and it can not be seen apart from this essentially political function.

Lipset and Rokkan Model

Seymour Lipset and Stein Rokkan, while using the center-periphery model, stated that the process of modernization might give rise to territorial and cultural conflicts that persist into industrial society. However they consider territorial resistance to incorporation as the result of an incomplete modernization and therefore the continuing isolation of the periphery from the center. Thus territorial politics may develop where there is a heavy concentration of a distinct culture in the periphery; where there are few ties of communication, alliance and bargaining experience toward the national center and more toward external centers of cultural and economic influence; and where there is minimal economic dependence on the metropolis. In other words, where the process of modernization has been incomplete and the periphery has remained isolated, a distinctive territorial politics may persist.^7

^ John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), 8.

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Ronan Paddison Model

Ronan Paddison distinguishes three types of integrative factors, measuring cultural, economic and political variables in the process of national integration. The interplay of these factors are important in assessing especially the reasons for fragmentation in national states. The first, cultural integration, is deemed important by Paddison, since one of the tests of national integration is the extent to which a shared national identity is conrunonly subscribed. Thus culturally based differences that give rise to their own internal sets of loyalties are potentially divisive. Chief among these factors are those associated with religion or language or some other basis that helps support an ethnic group, membership of which gives the individual a value system that he will use to orientate himself to the wider national society.28

The second integrative factor is economic integration. National economic integration is achieved once there are substantially comparable levels of social and economic development in all the regions of the state. According to Paddison, at one level, it assumes that as the developed economy brings in regional specialization, each region interacts with others and becomes increasingly interdependent with them. But it also assumes that each

Seymour M. Upset and Stein Rokkan, "Qeavage structures, party systems and voter alignments: an introduction," in Party Systems and Voter Alignments, S. M, Upset and S. Rokkan (New York: Free Press, 1967), 12.

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individual region enjoys roughly similar benefits from membership of the national economy, measurably through indices as per capita income, the consumption of goods and services, mortality rates, the incidence of unemployment and the proportion to employment in 'declining industries'. Paddison adds that the implications of this have been linked to the development of nationalism.^^ The third, political integration is linked with the extent to which social class is the basis of political conflict.^° Even though other factors such as religion, ethnicity are cleavage-forming in a successful political integration, the distribution of wealth between classes is superceded.^^ Paddison also argues that the existence of regional political parties provides the most overt evidence of an unsuccessful national political integration. Such parties are by definition tied to a territory embracing only a part of the state, their objectives are usually to mobilize support across class lines and to win concessions, including autonomy or the right to secede, from the state.32

Anthony Birch Model

According to Birch, modern nations are an amalgam of historical communities which possessed a fairly clear sense of separate identity in the

29 Ibid., 70. 30 Ibid., 71. 3^ Ibid. '2 Ibid., 74.

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past but have been brought together by various economic, social and political developments. The process by which they are brought together is known as

political integration.^ Thus the term refers to the process by which smaller communities are consolidated into territorially larger units of government. Loyalties to local political institutions typically become secondary to the allegiance and support enjoyed by the larger unit.^ When political integration takes place at the national level, it is described as national

integration.^

Birch underlines two main phases in the process of national integration. The first phase is characterized by the attempt to reach the natural borders or physical boundaries that would provide the state with military defensibility and a sense of integrity and completeness.^^ It is usually called state-building or penetration, which involves military pacification of the territory and the build-up of a network of field administration services insuring that the center is able to meet the basic needs of government, for instance the establishment of law and order and means to collect taxes.^^ This phase can also be

^ Anthony H. Birch, Nationalism and National Integration (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 8.

^ Paddison, The Fragmented State: The Political Geography o f Power, 58. ^ Birch, Nationalism and National Integration, 8.

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characterized with the assertion of sovereignty, which in early modern Europe represented the rejection of the universal claims of the Catholic Church and the residue of the Holy Roman Empire and the claim that ultimate power resided within the boundaries of the state. After the French Revolution the process of destruction of particularistic institutions continued even more effectively by the republican and Napoleonic regimes.^»

The second phase is nation-building, during which the process of mass social fusion takes place, giving the political unit a common identity. This identity is "nationality",^^ by which a state would claim that populations currently subject of its own or a neighboring state were "nationally" the same as the claimants own population and hence should join the latter in a single system of rule.4° According to Rokkan's center-periphery model, this phase is associated with center-initiated policies aimed at cultural standardization, notably a common language and education system.^^

Paddison, The Fragmented State, 61-62. See also Birch, Nationalism and

National Integration, 8.

33 Michael Keating, Nations Against the State: The New Politics o f Nationalism in

Quebec, Catalonia and Scotland (Great Britain: MacMillan Press Ltd., 1996), 16. 39 Ibid., 63.

40 Poggi, The Development o f the Modern State: A Sociological Introduction, 90. Stein Rokkan, "Dimensions of state-formation and nation-building: a possible paradigm for research on variations within Europe," in Tilly (ed.).

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Birch enumerates the essential steps in this process as the creation of symbols of national identity (such as a head of state, a flag and a national anthem), the establishment of national political institutions that bring all the citizens under the same law, the creation of an educational system which gives children a sense of national identity, teaching them about their common history and inculcating patriotism, and the development of national pride.^^ the result of a successful national integration, "the citizens must feel that it is their government whom they are obeying, their country for which they are making sacrifices."^^

2. Theories of Fragmentation

The national integration process from time to time was reversed and, in fact, culminated in fragmentation. One of the biggest surprises of the 1960s and 1970s were the revival of ethnic-regional-micronational consciousness within some of the oldest, and most advanced national societies. This situation ran contrary to the theories of the modernization school, which until then claimed that modernization would bring with itself national integration, and in turn, the cleavages between the constituent units of a nation-state would wither away. The rise of especially ethnic separatist movements within the

Birch, Nationalism and National Integration, 9-10.

Ibid., 8-9. Birch states that the main obstacle to the development of national integration is the existence of ethnic or cultural minorities within the state who resist integrative tendencies. The steps in integration of such minorities

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seemingly established nation-states in the 1970s proved this theory wrong. The re-emergence of regional nationalism not only upset many of the textbook theories of politics in western nations, but it also proved an uncomfortable experience for scholars who are brought up within 'national' traditions which took for granted the existing state order, and regarded regional nationalism either as a pathological condition, that is a malfunction of the modern state or as an archaic throwback, a temporary regression in political development.^^

Michael Hechter's Model of Internal Colonialism

The model of internal colonialism seeks to explain the causes of new regional nationalism in the early 1960s as a response to economic deprivation.^^ Hechter aims to explain resurgent minority nationalism by specifically arguing that this was a reactive mechanism to cultural and economic domination by a core group. The basic argument is that a cultural system of stratification overlies the more characteristic economic configuration of classes. Cultural domination arises, because in the process of modernization, certain areas and groups become more advanced and are able to use this to establish their economic and political superiority. Efforts by the core group to

is first, social mobilization, and second, official national language for instruction in schools. Ibid., 10.

Michael Keating, State and Regional Nationalism, 1-2.

Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National

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maintain their status will lead them to subordinate minority groups within a cultural division of labor. The outcome will be apparent not only in the overall economic structure of the peripheral ethnic areas but also, more specifically in the occupations of the minority group members as in their general wellbeing. In other words, the economic differences between center and periphery can be causally linked to the cultural differences between core and periphery groups.^^

T. R. Gurr's "Relative Deprivation" Model

T. R. Gurr has developed a general model of conflict in which he argues that right or wrong perceptions of relative deprivation leads to frustration, which in turn fuels discontent and results in violence in the peripheral areas. In some extreme cases it may even lead to secession of the "relatively deprived" part of the country. This is only likely where the feeling of relative deprivation is widely felt among a territorially distinct population. These territorial differences, combined with beliefs that central control has been relatively disadvantageous to the region's prosperity help explain national fragmentation in the forms of increased demands for autonomy

Most of the above-mentioned theories are based on the idea that groups in the periphery perceive themselves to be deprived, usually economically, but, in

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some versions, culturally or politically, relative to those in the center. However, there is a poor relationship between relative economic deprivation and peripheral nationalism. Nor does a resurgence of territorial identity always coincide with a relative downturn in the regional economy. On the contrary, some regional movements have often been associated with a relative economic improvement. The best examples here are the cases of Catalonia or the Basque region and also the Northern League movement in Italy, where regional nationalism has emerged in the economically advanced regions.

The N ew P aradigm s o f R egion alism

In the 1990s tendencies towards fragmentation continued in various regions of Europe. Most interestingly, established nation-states faced difficulties vis- a-vis these fragmenting tendencies, such as the Scottish in Britain, Basque in Spain and the Lombards in Italy. However, with the end of the Cold War between the two blocs and the collapse of communism, the explanations for these new regional movements differed from the previous ones. Thus the 1990s witnessed a neo-regionalist school which can be regarded as also being post-modernist Post-modern society, like all antithesis, brings to the extremes some of the trends of the preceding one, and in part, represents a reaction to it. Cultural pluralism, polycentrism, and localism belong to the post-modern view. It is also marked by the rejection of the value of uniformity, equality and homogeneity, which characterizes the modernist

41

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thinking which is shaped by the requirements of the rule of law, of bureaucracy, and of mass production. Post-modernist thoughts defend the value of diversity and multiplicity.

Thus in the post-modernist and neo-regionalist perspective, unlike the old paradigms of regionalism that were regarded as having negative connotations, the term regionalism acquired positive connotations. As a neo- regionalist, Thomas Hueglin has pointed out there is considerable dissent as to whether regionalist movements are backward-oriented, traditional reactions against modernity and its defects. On the one hand, regionalism is described as the "resurgence of tribal sentiments" and as part of a "backlash" politics; on the other hand, it is identified as a leftist strategy linked to the new social movements and arising from peripheral forms of anticapitalist struggle.^® According to Hueglin the paradigmatic change on the left culminated in the rediscovery of province as a new basis of emancipation. Ever since the French Revolution, regionalism had been regarded as provincialism and as a feudal relic impeding the democratic goals of equality and participation. But when the demerits of the centralized bourgeois intervention and welfare state became more obvious, the political left, or

Thomas O. Hueglin, "Regionalism in Western Europe. Conceptual Problems of a New Political Perspective," Comparative Politics, 18, (July 1986), 447.

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rather the non-Fabian faction rediscovered the province as a new basis of emancipation.^^

According to neo-regionalists, there are several reasons as to why regionalism had not been paid much attention to, but had rather developed as a subsidiary or side-topic. For instance, as Thomas Hueglin argues, "it is due to a centralist Weltanschauung and both political scientists and politicians have been slow to recognize it as a dominant trend. As a result they had failed to anticipate the impact of regional movements on politics in Western Europe.^° Perry Anderson provided a historical account of why the term "region" was so much neglected. As he explained, the term "region" was never central in the political vocabulary of the early modern state. There were several administrative terms to denote territorial subdivisions within the framework of absolutist or semi-constitutionalist rule. In common discourse, however, the word "province" was more or less universal usage. Even though this term was used in the interwar period, in the post-war world, it faded away, ceasing to form part of acceptable discourse. From the beginning, the term also had a secondary connotation which was related to its Roman origins: provinces existed not just as a division of a realm, but also in its opposition to its capital.51 Thus, in time, the usage of 'province' fell out of favor, as

« Ibid., 448.

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compromised by a pejorative cultural undertone, leaving the field free for 'region' as a neutral term. However, when the term 'region' first acquired a political ring, in the late nineteenth century, there was also opposition against it. If 'regionalism' was accepted in the literature as a minor but harmless sub genre, regionalism in politics was condemned by most contemporaries as a regressive recalcitrance against the unity of the nation.^^

Another reason why region was not popular had to do with the ideological

contradictions o f liberalism. As a doctrine of liberation, liberalism sets individuals free from the constraints of the traditional institutions and communities such as religion, ethnicity and region. This was not only wishful thinking but a blatant disregard of the contradictions on which liberal democracy and the welfare state were based. Postulating a general decline of the older group and conflict patterns in the age of consensus and affluence.

51 Perry Anderson, The Invention o f the Region 1945-1990. (Badia Fiesolana: European University Institute, 1994), 7. According to Anderson, "the source of this contrast was French. Pejorative reference to 'provincial' culture and manners can be found as early as Montaigne, and is a commonplace by the time of Madame de Sevigne. Bourbon centralization in the time of Louis XIV gave it virtually canonical force. From France, the associated meaning spread throughout Europe. By the early 18* century Samuel Johnson's dictionary in England treats 'provincial' as more or less a synonym of bucolic. By th? 19* century when the earlier antithesis between court and country-onto which the opposition between capital and provinces had been mapped- had ceased to be active, scorn for provincialism if anything intensified, becoming a standard topos of mid-century French literature- Gautier, Sand, Flaubert, in particular. It is thus clear enough why the term province should have lost credit in the polite vocabulary of politics, once universal suffrage became a 20* century norm."

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the proponents of liberalism overlooked the fact that it itself depended on stable patterns of local, ethnic, religious, or class relationships. As a result, regionalism was always regarded as a backward-oriented reaction against modernization and centralization and as a fragmenting force and a threat against the unity and integrity of the modern nation-state.

According to Anderson, there were three significant forces that contributed to the rise of the region as a point of political identification across Western Europe. The first of these was the uneven economic development of postwar capitalism. One came across the phenomenon of the 'depressed region' already in the inter-war period. But amidst the general hardships of the Slump and the War, it did not acquire prominence. During the post-war period, on the other hand, the fate of those areas which did not share in the median rise of the living standards within each nation, whether because they were zones of declining industry, or of uncompetitive agriculture, stood out as socially more combustible. Pressure for measures to redress the handicaps of relative disadvantage inevitably built up, giving a meaning to regions- economic interest supplying bonds even where prior cultural identity was weak.^

Hueglin, "Regionalism in Western Europe," 440. My emphasis. ^ Anderson, The Invention o f the Region 1945-1990,10.

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A second force was quite different in its impact and even opposite in direction. At a somewhat later stage of development, modernization and concentration of the means of mass communication started to create conditions of hitherto unprecedented cultural homogeneity within each nation-state of Western Europe. Television notoriously played the prime role in this process. Predictably, centralization of this kind in due course provoked local reactions. Other things being equal, most people wanted both material conditions similar to and cultural distinctions setting them off from, those within existentially comparative range from themselves. Uneven economic development gave one impulse to regional identification, and too even cultural development gave another.^^

The most profound change has been the advent of the European Community (now the European Union) itself. The emergence of a supra-national administration, more distant from immediate experience than any previous public authority has put an understandable premium on sub-national administration, as a compensating mechanism. The European institutions, in particular the Commission and the Parliament have been trying to by-pass national authorities, in pursuit of closer union and they express their interest in promoting regional institutions as lower-level partners, as it is expressed clearly in their Charter of Regionalization.

Ibid., 10-11. My emphasis. This point was further elaborated by the writers on nationalism in the modernization discourse mentioned above.

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To these three factors, Anderson adds one alteration which is in line with Hueglin's. He states that until 1945, the dominant ideological value in every Western European society was the nation. That is, the supreme legitimating discourse of public action was advance or defense of national interest or identity. This held good for both liberal-democratic and fascist-authoritarian regimes. After 1945 this has changed. One reason was the mutual destruction brought by the Second World War itself that left every West European power, including the winners, destroyed. Ideally, democracy became the prime internal justification of the existing social order, counterposed to its dictatorial opposite in Eastern Europe. It was above all, this permutation which released dynamics of the region. It weakened the principal modern barrier to the growth of regional autonomy. In Western Europe territorial claims by one state against another effectively disappeared, neutralizing one factor that had often made local autonomy suspect to central authority. The nation was now at once secured as a space and relativized as a code, the region could stir more freely within it. This was a negative condition-lifting of the restraints.®^

On the other hand, the elevation of democracy into supreme legitimation of the social order offered a positive opening to regional affirmation. Parliamentary systems based on universal suffrage and civil rights afforded a

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compelling model of self-government. The question that now arose was: why should representative institutions be confined to the national level, necessarily distant from local life? Could they not be extended to the 'regional' level, so that they could 'fill ouT the bare structures of decision making at the center? Nothing inherent in the doctrines of liberal democracy appeared to rule out such a dédoublement. At worst, regional authorities might be supererogatory but they could not easily be viewed as incompatible with national assemblies.

Nevertheless, whatever the possible mediations between them, there had always been an undeniable tension between nation and region. Between democracy and region, by contrast, the relation might seem more like one of completion.®®In this way, the term region gained a positive connotation. What is very important regarding this new political perspective was the linkage between globalism and localism. According to this view, "the growth of globalism does not correlate with a corresponding decline of localism; on the contrary, many new forms of localism are cropping up. 'New localism' seems an emergent feature of 'postmodern society'

Ibid. 58 Ibid.

5^ Raimondo Strossoldo, "Globalism and Localism: Theoretical Reflections and some evidence," in Zdravko Mlinar (ed.) Globalization and Territorial

Identities, (England: Avebury, 1992), 35. Also see, Zdravko Mlinar,

"Individuation and Globalization: the Transformation of Territorial Social Organization," in Mlinar, ed.. Globalization and Territorial Identities, 1-34.

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As noted, students of territorial politics called these regionalisms neo-

regionalism } also because the concept connoted the reaction to modernist

explanations, or old paradigms of regionalism. The first paradigm that the neo-regionalists reject for explaining and analyzing the rise of regionalism has been the center-periphery disparity. Hueglin argues that "peripherality is by no means synonymous with underdevelopment. Rokkan and Urwin define peripherality as "distance, difference and dependence". Peripheries depend on one or more centers with regard to "political decision-making" "cultural standardization" and "economic life". Thus peripherality includes both a horizontal dimension of spatial asymmetry and a vertical dimension of socioeconomic and political interaction characterized by central control. From this perspective regionalism appears as a protest movement against political- administrative and socioeconomic centrality. It is not so important whether its goals are sociocultural autonomy, political federalism, or outright separatism, whether its driving force is a small intellectual elite or politically organized party, nor whether its motives are predominantly cultural, economic, or political. The common characteristic of all peripheral regions is their position with regard to the overarching system of centrality.

The modernist explanations of regionalism are unsatisfactory for the most part, because they fail to explain what exactly set these peripheral predicaments in motion. Ethnicity and language can hardly explain why

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regional identities would become salient exactly at a moment when ethnic minorities had almost ceased to differ from their majoritarian mass culture surroundings. These ends are now commonly explained in socioeconomic terms. But while the "unevenness" of the "tidal wave of modernization" goes a long way in explaining particular regionalist reactions against centralist national policy-making, there is also counter-evidence. A study of the correlation of regionalism and industrial development in 1975 showed that regionalism and anti-centralism in the then European Economic Community were most pronounced in those areas that had already attained some degree of modernization, whereas the poorest and predominantly agrarian regions sided with the industrialized centers, showing considerable faith in centralist national problem-solving. Hence, the mere factor of unevenness does not explain regionalist mobilization sufficiently. Regional mobilization is a "question of inconsistency between economic strength/ potential and cultural status. Generally speaking, the phenomenon of uneven development in the process of modernization does not seem to correlate very well with the epochal rise of regionalism. Further explanation must be found in causal factors which are more specifically linked to the socioeconomic turbulences of that epoch.

The neo-regionalists provide some alternative explanations for the rise of regionalism that can be grouped under two main headings:

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(a) Endogenous reasons: According to those scholars who adopt this approach, the rise of regionalism was mainly due to the modem concept and nature of the state itself and the way it was integrated and functioned. The main attribute of the modern state has been its highly centralized structure. As a result, the nation-state has become overloaded and is losing the capability to provide basic services and perform its traditional function.

As "the nation-state became too big to run everyday life and too small to manage international affairs,"^^ the regions or the sub-national units constituting the nation-state came to have influence and authority. The consequence of this development is that the national cultures and identities are squeezed between a much wider, more global culture and local or regional cultures and identities.^i As a result, national identities may not necessarily disappear but they may be overshadowed by regional or local identities. The next step is alienation from the state, questioning its legitimacy regarding fulfilling the needs of the specific regional/local entity, followed by demands and sometimes struggles for more autonomy. Thus tension between the nation-state and its constituent units regarding the issue of more devolution of power from the center to the regions once more came to the

John Newhouse, "Europe's Rising Regionalism," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76, No: 1, January-February 1997, 67.

Regionalism as a failure of national integration: a case study of Italy